It’s hard to imagine tonight’s town hall debate in St. Louis
helping President Bush, but since the conventional wisdom has
declared him the loser in the first debate — in which he did fine
— maybe he will flail around to rave reviews. I’ve given up trying
to understand how people assess these things.
For candidates, the town hall format requires a kind of
empathy-on-demand, perfected by Bill Clinton and now firmly
entrenched in our political culture. Tonight Bush and John Kerry
will need to show that they “get it,” and that they “care about the
problems of people like me,” in the standard polling phrase.
Who are “people like me,” in a nation of nearly 300 million?
Why, “ordinary, average Americans,” of course. No one at these town
hall events has yet taken umbrage at being referred to as average,
a term I find rather…insensitive. This is probably because
they have more pressing grievances every four years. For
spectators, televised town halls are an invitation to reverse JFK’s
famous credo and ask what their country can do for them, and to
seek solutions to problems that have more to do with human
imperfection than anything a president can influence. The
candidates are happy to oblige them.
Whole areas of vital substance get ignored, especially if they
aren’t viewed as bearing directly on one’s little slice of the
universe. In the 2000 debate, Bush and Gore at times seemed like
dueling insurance salesmen, attacking their opponent’s “plan” and
arguing for the benefits of their own “package.” In the 1996 town
hall between Clinton and Bob Dole, a single question was asked in
90 minutes about foreign policy, a fact Dole lamented in his
closing statement. That’s one problem that won’t recur this
year.
Given all we’ve been through since the last election, maybe the
questions will be more substantive this time than 1992’s infamous
“How has the national debt affected each of you personally?” Iraq
will be asked about, probably in a distinctly town hall
formulation, such as: “President Bush, do you feel personally
responsible for the deaths of American troops in Iraq?”
In a perfect world, Bush would respond by expressing his
reverence for our fallen troops and then talk about how good he
feels every time he kills another terrorist, and maybe rub his
hands together for good measure. But that’s just not the political
culture we live in. Expressing such “aggression” constitutes defeat
in a debate, whereas credibly expressing sorrow, with maybe some
guilt thrown in for good measure, constitutes victory.
Bush is a man of real emotion, as Americans discovered after
9/11, so he will probably be able to handle the personal “gotcha”
questions about Iraq reasonably well. No matter how he stumbles
over his words, he has a genuineness that many in the audience will
instinctively like and respond to. Empathy is a language he can
speak…when he can find the words. You just never know how the
president’s verbal motor will be running. At his best, he’s decent.
At his worst, it’s all you can do not to jump through the
television set and cover his mouth.
IN 2000, BUSH HAD THE benefit of an opponent who could overshadow
his weaknesses at every turn. In the first debate it was Al Gore’s
sighs; in the second it was his sedated tone and appearance; and in
the third, even Bush’s stream of consciousness answers could not
obscure Gore’s attempt to invade his space, a moment when it
appeared as if the vice president wanted to body-check Bush off the
stage. When you have an opponent as unhinged as that, you can speak
pig latin and sound good.
Bush has no such luck this year. Kerry is more disciplined than
Gore, more in control of himself. Since he has no core convictions,
self-management in the service of ambition comes more easily. Gore
never could manage it, ambitious as he was.
Will Kerry’s discipline enable him to impersonate a man with
warmth and personality? He misted up in New Hampshire in 2003 when
a woman told him a commonplace tale of economic woe. For the town
hall debate, he’ll sprinkle in some self-deprecation — “I may not
be the most exciting guy in the world” — with world-class
pandering, and he’ll make the connection:
“Well, Russ, I think it’s terrible that you’ve lost your job and
that your skin condition is acting up again. I think that’s just
wrong, in America, for people to be subject to external
circumstances, bad luck, or their own mistakes. That’s why I’ve
developed a program to eliminate all uncertainty from human
existence. If you work hard and play by the rules, everything else
in life should be guaranteed. But what has my opponent done to
shield the American people from the inevitable ravages of economic
cycles, aging, and death? Not…one…thing!”
The liberal candidate will always have the advantage in town
hall debates, even when he is as haughty and stiff as Kerry,
because such debates are always about one question: What are you
going to do for me? It is a remarkably un-American question, but
every four years candidates fall over themselves trying to answer
it.
Whether or not Bush puts in one of his better performances, the
only smart thing his campaign has done in agreeing to this debate
is scheduling it for Friday night.
That’s when even most average, ordinary Americans will have
better things to do than watch.
